There's a place here that sells really good ribs, but for whatever reason, it was bought out, and is now closed. At some point (since I didn't know about this) I thought it may have been closed for remodeling, and when I asked my dad about, he told me about it being bought out.

As far a remodeling, the Taco Bell near my house, however they did it freaked me out, because it took a week or two to tear it down, but it seems as though it took one night to build back up.

---Febreze (and other air fresheners actually) is just below perfumes/colognes, and that's just below dead skunks in terms of smells that offend my nose.MiquelFire.red | +MeWindows 8 is a toned, stylish, polished professional athlete. But it’s wearing clown makeup, and that creates a serious image problem. ~PCWorld Article

This is the first I've heard of [the incident(s) at] VidCon. I am in the process of trying to find unbiased accounts (what I've read so far looks bad for Anita, and also VidCon organizers and the media for backing her up in this matter; and that's even by reading supportive media...). I imagine sooner or later I'll come across the videos of the opposing side, but I seem to already know what happened. It sounds like she attacked them and somehow cried harassment, simply because her critics had the audacity to show up in the front rows of one of her talks. And somehow the media and organizers took her side.

Amarillion's article has a good point about dumbing down gameplay mechanic introduction--like if a blue power-up yields 1 point but a red yields 2, how do you tell the player? This is a simplified example, but it's not hard to imagine even slightly more complicated mechanics going over the heads of most people. If I were to add something to the discussion, I would say not to worry too much--because at the end of the day, all that matters is whether or not players have fun, not whether or not they understand what's going on. (Besides, the latter comes with time regardless.)

all that matters is whether or not players have fun, not whether or not they understand what's going on.

I agree with this statement, though I would argue that making sure the player knows what's going on from the start can help avoid confusion down the line, especially if the confusion is related to a game's story.

I think 'implicit tutorials' are a neat concept, but they can be overdone.

I think part of the problem is that 'implicit tutorials' is one of the few concepts in game design that are clearly understandable and not subjective. It's something that can be explained to beginning game designers, and they go 'Wow, this is really neat, I can do that too'. And they learn about how Miyamoto, the greatest game designer alive, used this in Super Mario Bros, World 1-1. And now suddenly game design becomes all about implicit tutorials. Like there is nothing else! Of course there are other things, but they are much vaguer, much harder to explain and more subjective.

In my article I highlight the problem with Usagi, where a certain mechanic is not easy to figure out. But you know what: in play testing, players were clearly having fun, whether they understood it or not. So yes, I could explain better. But it's not the end of the world either.

---Febreze (and other air fresheners actually) is just below perfumes/colognes, and that's just below dead skunks in terms of smells that offend my nose.MiquelFire.red | +MeWindows 8 is a toned, stylish, polished professional athlete. But it’s wearing clown makeup, and that creates a serious image problem. ~PCWorld Article

Warren Specter (System Shock 1, and Deux Ex) and Tim Caine (Fallout) aren't dead yet. So I have no idea how one can claim greatest developer titles.

Peter Molyneux (if only he'd get his head out of the clouds and FINISH a game...)

I'm sure I could think of more if pressed. Obviously, Miyamoto has got to be one of the top ones of all time. But I would be hard pressed to "rank" them with respect to each other--as opposed to merely listing them.

On a somewhat related note (since these people are all [wo]men of great vision and creativity) I know people say "ideas are dime a dozen, the only difference is the effort people put into making those ideas a reality." But I think that might be bullcrap. "Good ideas" are dime a dozen. GREAT IDEAS are super rare and worth paying for and patenting. That's the reason we have patients and that's the reason Hollywood pays out-the-butt to buy scripts and IP rights to successful books. If they could generate talent and great IP's "in-house" they would.

-----sig:“Programs should be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.” - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

Have any of you bought anything good from Steam's summer sale? I just picked up Cave Story+, a fun action platformer. I played the game on Wii last year and liked it a lot. I expect I'll like it even more now on PC.

By the way, I'm giving away a bunch of Steam keys to games I don't want. I made a thread about it here.

Player Unknown's Battlegrounds is a survival horror or something that plays out like molasses. I watched a guy playing it on Twitch a while back wondering what it was, and was wondering when the action would happen. I watched for like 40 minutes or an hour and literally nothing happened. I don't have that kind of time, but for people that do I'm sure it's fun.

I personally have not found any games on sale on Steam that are cheap enough for me to invest lately. I try to only buy the ones that I know I'll actually play. I haven't seen any really cheap ones, and the few that I wanted were too expensive.

I feel that. There are literally dozens of games sitting in my library that I got from bundles that have never been touched. I recently went through my library deciding which games to keep and which ones to toss. In total, I permanently removed 29 games and some DLC.

Here's most of what got axed:

Switch Galaxy Ultra

Vangers

Arcade Game Series: Pac-Man

Arcade Game Series: Dig Dug

Arcade Game Series: Galaga

OutDrive

Savage Lands

ACE COMBAT™ ASSAULT HORIZON Enhanced Edition

Tropico 4

X-COM: UFO Defense

Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade

Super Hexagon

Duke Nukem Forever

Super Meat Boy

Tharsis

BioShock

BioShock Remastered

Life is Strange

Monster Truck Destruction

Starpoint Gemini 2

Space Engineers

DiRT Showdown

Saints Row 2

PAYDAY 2

Attractio

Depression Quest

Unturned

LIMBO

While most were cut because they simply didn't interest me, some did so because they were genuinely bad. Regardless, I feel better now that I've cleaned up my library a bit.

EditIn addition to Cave Story, I also picked up Kero Blaster. It's made by the same guy, so I'm sure it'll be fun.

Support > Games, Software, etc. > "Some Game" > I want to permanently remove this game from my account > Ok, remove the listed games from my account permanently

It's permanent though, so be careful.

EditIf you try to remove games you got in a package/bundle, Steam may have you remove everything from said package/bundle instead of the individual item, which sucks. Like I wanted to remove Sonic CD (I like classic Sonic, but Sonic CD has piss poor level design, IMO), but Steam said I could only do that if I also got rid of 4 other games that I bought together. Guess I'll hang onto Sonic CD for now...

BumpSo who do you think will be the first human to be tossed into the sun?